UnDiet: Eat Your Way To Vibrant Health

This is the mantra of Toronto-area nutritionist (or “nutritionista” as she likes to call herself), Meghan Telpner. Meghan became interested in Nutrition after doctors diagnosed her with an “incurable autoimmune disease.” Unable to accept this diagnosis, she set out to prove them wrong. After “UnDieting” for one month, Meghan was happily and healthily 100% symptom-free, and continues to remains so. Having ignited the Nutrition fire, Meghan made the journey to become a Certified Nutritionist and today not only writes her popular blog, but also runs online culinary courses (which I am looking into!), just recently opened her Culinary Nutrition school, and has written the phenomenal book UnDiet.

I’ve been following Meghan’s blog for a few years now and love her feisty, but straight-forward approach to Nutrition. I received her book as a birthday present and was practically vibrating with excitement after finishing it. Why?

UnDiet is full of SO much excellent information – information that anyone can understand.

It makes me extremely happy that there are others out there who share the same views on Nutrition as me.

It also makes me so so SO excited for what the future holds for me in this line of work!

So what’s UnDiet all about?

As mentioned above, Meghan believes in “UnDieting”, that is, avoiding all the public and media hogwash about diets and dieting, and instead simply just eating REAL food.

In UnDiet, Meghan takes readers on a journey through the simple basics of Nutrition and why UnDieting works. Her quirkiness will make you laugh out loud as she delves into topics from meal planning, food prep, food storage and the importance of hydration, to battling cravings, manifesting a good poop, and “making love in the kitchen”! She also shares 40 delicious gluten-free recipes to help you on your way to UnDiet.

Although the book mainly focuses on food, Meghan also takes a peek into our cleaning cupboards and skin care. These two sections were equally as fascinating to me as the nutrition info and have really motivated me to do some clean up in these areas of my own life, especially with skin care. The skin is our body’s largest organ, and Meghan makes a good point by noting that if we don’t eat skin care products because they’re poisonous, why do we put them on our skin and let our body absorb them? Definitely some food for thought!

My favorite tidbits from the book:

“Wouldn’t you rather eat something that tastes healthy than something that tastes like it might cause you to have a quadruple bypass? Strangely, for most people, they’ll take the bypass. Play now, pay later.” (This is horrifying, and NOT the way people should be thinking about things. We only have one life. We don’t want to cut it short to have to “pay later!”)

“The basic flaw in a calorie-counting diet and most conventional diet programs, is that they rarely consider the nutritional value of the calorie. Not all calories are equal.” (See my post on calories for more on this!)

“In the spirit of celebration” indulgences should ideally be partaken in with the utmost selectivity.” (Ties in well with my recent post about cheating on your diet!)

“Cellulite is a sign of built up toxins in fat cells.” (…It appears I have some toxic fat cells. Yikes. Need to fix this!)

“As soon as a normal food becomes “diet”, “light”, or “free,” you know it has taken a trip to the chemistry lab.” (Avoid these foods at all costs!)

“People will often reach for food and will acknowledge that it’s emotional eating, claiming it brings them comfort, but being overweight and sick never made anyone comfortable.” (I have never thought about it like this before, but I like this approach!)

“Supplements are not meant to replace a good diet. They are intended to supplement proper eating by adding a little extra dose of nutrition when we need it.” (I talked about this in a previous post on vitamin supplements!)

“Our food system, as we know it, is becoming a worldwide threat to our health.” (Considering we have to eat to survive, this is a terrifying thought. Something needs to be done!)

“The grand missing component of total health is our attitude. We can blame others all we want but ultimately our level of health and happiness is our own responsibility.” (Love this!)

“Who wants to rely on any substance (e.g. coffee every morning) to be “fine”? By UnDieting, we want to do our best to not have to rely on any substance except maybe real food, water, sunshine and fresh air to function.” (REALLY love this!)